Three plead guilty in rewards point program scam

Syracuse, NY - Three Onondaga County men pleaded guilty this week in a scam to rip off an electronics company's merchandise rewards program over the Internet.

Assistant District Attorney Robert DeMarco said today the scheme involved the theft of about $177,000 in merchandise from the Samsung Rewards Program. A lot of the property was recovered with the arrests of 11 people in Onondaga County, he said.

DeMarco said the rewards program was set up by Samsung nationally to encourage salesmen to pitch the company's cell phones to customers. Sales would earn points that could be redeemed for merchandise through Amazon, the prosecutor said.

According to DeMarco, Holmes learned how to open fraudulent accounts to acquire extra reward points. He very quickly shared that information with friends and relatives, the prosecutor said. The defendants were redeeming the points and having property - much of it electronic equipment - sent to their homes and other addresses, he said.

Samsung officials discovered the problem last summer when it noticed an unusually high concentration of reward points being redeemed from this geographic area, the prosecutor said. Having the addresses to which the property was sent and evidence from the Internet activity enabled police to quickly identify suspects, DeMarco said.

DeMarco said Holmes, Weiskopf and Dooley are to be sentenced to probation and ordered to pay restitution. Because so much of the property was recovered and is being held in storage by police to be reclaimed by Samsung, the amount of restitution has yet to be determined, he said.